Quotes About Ethics

If I could not be persuaded into doing what I thought wrong, I will never be tricked into it.

How little of permanent happiness could belong to a couple who were only brought together because their passions were stronger than their virtue.

I was so anxious to do what is right that I forgot to do what is right.

I cannot think well of a man who sports with any woman's feelings; and there may often be a great deal more suffered than a stander-by can judge of.

Evil to some is always good to others

I have no pretensions whatever to that kind of elegance which consists in tormenting a respectable man.

I leave it to be settled, by whomsoever it may concern, whether the tendency of this work be altogether to recommend parental tyranny, or reward filial disobedience.

When the evening was over, Anne could not be amused…nor could she help fearing, on more serious reflection, that, like many other great moralists and preachers, she had been eloquent on a point in which her own conduct would ill bear examination.

General benevolence, but not general friendship, make a man what he ought to be.

It would be most right, and most wise, and, therefore must involve least suffering.

We do not look in great cities for our best morality.

The loss of virtue in a female is irretrievable - that one false step involves in her endless ruin - that her reputation is no less brittle than it is beautiful - and that she cannot be too much guarded in her behavior towards the undeserving of the opposite sex.

the pleasantness of an employment does not always evince its propriety.

That loss of virtue in a female is irretrievable-- that one false step involves her in endless ruin-- that her reputation is no less brittle than it is beautiful-- and that she cannot be too much guarded in her behavior towards the undeserving of the opposite sex. ~Mary Bennett, P&P

I cannot think well of a man who sports with any woman's feelings; and there may often be a great deal more suffered than a stander-by can judge.

A person who is knowingly bent on bad behavior, gets upset when better behavior is expected of them.

Unhappy as the event must be for Lydia, we may draw from it this useful lesson: that loss of virtue in a female is irretrievable; that one false step involves her in endless ruin; that her reputation is no less brittle than it is beautiful; and that she cannot be too much guarded in her behaviour towards the undeserving of the other sex.

Affectation of candour is common enough—one meets with it everywhere. But to be candid without ostentation or design—to take the good of everybody's character and make it still better, and say nothing of the bad—belongs to you alone.

Well, evil to some is always good to others.

I shall ever despise the man who can be gratified by the passion which he never wished to inspire, nor solicited the avowal of.

for when people are determined on a mode of conduct which they know to be wrong, they feel injured by the expectation of any thing better from them.

If I am wrong, I am doing what I believe to the right.

He is also handsome, replied Elizabeth, which a young man ought likewise to be, if he possibly can. His character is thereby complete.

Here I am once more in this scene of dissipation and vice, and I begin already to find my morals corrupted. -- Jane Austen's Letters August 1796